English translation of The Mask of Black Death (unfilmed Kurosawa script)

After an embarrassingly long break, I have again been working on my guide to the Akira Kurosawa Digital Archive. There are some really interesting things in the archive, and I think that some of them have been added since I last explored the index.

Although almost everything is in Japanese, there are some English documents as well. One of the most interesting has got to be the English translation of Kurosawa’s unfilmed script The Mask of Black Death, which is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of Red Death.

To access it, go to the AK Digital Archive. Then, with the menu on the left, navigate to 24.10.01. The Japanese is “黒き死の假面 英訳” (The Mask of Black Death: English Translation). The whole section 24 is about unfilmed scripts by Kurosawa, including the Tora! Tora! Tora! script.

I haven’t read the script yet (I only just stumbled on it), but will do so as soon as I find the time (and it takes quite a lot of time with that interface!). Let me know your thoughts if you read it!